Thats So Savannah: Savannah-Ogeechee Canal is a piece of transportation history – Savannah Morning News

Christopher Berinato| For Savannah Morning News

Where to find the strange and wonderful in Savannah

That's So Savannah columnist Christopher Berinato talks about how he finds the stories he writes about.

Savannah Morning News

With Christmas around the corner, fleets of delivery trucks continuously zig-zag through neighborhoods making sure the piles of gifts people ordered online get to them on time. Ive had trucks stop in front of my own home multiple times some days. Although the incredibly short wait period between clicking the buy button and receiving the item is a modern technological miracle, supply chain woes during the pandemic have made me realize how much Ive taken the logistics of transportation for granted.

Before planes, trains, and automobiles...(and drones?)…the options for transporting large amounts of goods were pretty limited. Horses and carts are slow, and rivers only go wheretheywant to go.

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Another, less obvious, but effective, option was to dig your way there. That is what Georgia did when it chartered the Savannah-Ogeechee Barge Canal in 1824.

Between 1826 and 1830, African and Irish laborers dug a 16.5 mile canal connecting the Savannah River and the Ogeechee River (with 6 locks in-between). Slaves (later freemen) led mules up and down the canal as they towed barges, and for a while it was a boon for business in southern Georgia.

The first few years of the canal were a bit of a mess as rotting wooden locks and constant erosion of the embankment eventually forced the parent company into bankruptcy. The new company improved the locks and widened the canal, and consequently it was successful for the next twenty years.

Goods like rice, cotton, bricks, and peaches from plantations were moved along the canal to markets. The canal was particularly important for moving lumber from the large sawmill located at the basin.

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Use of the canal slowed down during the Civil War. Then when yellow fever hit the region, everyone blamed the canal for the severity of the outbreak, hurting business even more. By 1890 the canal shut down, replaced by railroads as the preferred mode of transport.

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Today the Savannah-Ogeechee Canal is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Part of the canal is home to the Savannah-Ogeechee Canal Museum and Nature Center where visitors can learn about the history of this well-preserved example of 19thcentury transportation and walk along several miles of trails that run through the 184 acres of swamp. The nature center also has many local animals including the state reptile the gopher tortoise and the state bird the brown thrasher.

The Savannah-Ogeechee Canal Museum and Nature Center is located at 681 Fort Argyle Rd. For more information visitsavannahogeecheecanal.org.

Christopher Berinato is the author of Secret Savannah: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure.

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Thats So Savannah: Savannah-Ogeechee Canal is a piece of transportation history - Savannah Morning News